Strategic management requires the practisioner to think strategically. No matter how many books, methods, frameworks, best-practises you have read and memorised, it will not make you a good strategist unless you know how to think as a strategist does. However, if you make strategic decisions on a regular basis, reading a lot on the issue facilitates to achieve better results. On one hand, as most people perceive it, strategic thinking is really just an ability to think “ahead”, it is a long-term thinking. I agree to the extent that it meant to be long-range, but that is just the tip of the iceberg. Now, consider the components of strategic thinking — as I see.
If you are a chief strategy officer/manager/director, CEO (whatever) you must be aware of the mission, the values, the vision of the corporation. You are aware what will be the result — and you are responsible for answering the question and then acting accordingly: how will the company be able to reach the goal given those inherent elements? You have to have the vision of the future inside your head as clear as possible. However, this is actually “long-term” thinking, I just expanded it by clearly stating the underlying things.
In order to reach the wished future you must act accordingly in the present. This is where the second skill comes to good use. There are numerous really complex problems to be solved in the present and these problems have to be solved somehow. However, it is not enough to deal with the problem, it is also necessary to deal with the right problem and for that the skill “identifying the critical issue” is needed. This is fairly similar to the process of identifying “key factors for success”, that is, finding those factors that make the most successful business premises in a given industry successful. These skills are crucial for a strategic thinker. There are two methods that may help the identification of critical issues: 5 Whys, Ishikawa Diagramm. If the critical issue is identified we can then, and only then, start to analyise the problem, dividing it into subissues by asking yes-es and no-s. This can be fostered by creating so-called mindmaps. This leads us from analytical problem to lateral thinking as drawing mindmaps usually involves creative elements, too. Identifying key factors for success needs two steps according to Kenichi Ohmae1: “first is to dissect the market as imaginatively as possible to identify its key segments; the second is to discover what distinguishes winner companies from losers, and then to analyze the differences between them”.
Furthermore, I think that a strategist must have a really rational and well-grounded thinking. Even if you identified the problem you must be aware of your own capabilities and have to be realistic when it comes to giving an answer to certain situations. Many times, you know what the best solution might be. Nonetheless, you cannot do it for other reasons. You must be risk aversive when it comes to deciding on strategically important issues, because a lot depends on such decisions.
Last, but not least, I deem one thing to be particularly important, because even if you are capable of having rational approach, ability to identify the key factors for success and have super-analytic mind — still, it is useless if you do not possess some lateral thinking as well. Without lateral thinking you may have some edge, but the ability to create new value by for example “connecting the unconnected”, that is, doing something that is creative / innovative gives you the real edge. Having a great balance on all these is the most difficult think in my opinion — but all of these can be developed by practise over time.
- Kenichi OHMAE, 1982; The mind of the strategist, United States of America, McGraw-Hill, Inc., p. 42 [↩]